The Museal Production of Hungary's Inorganic Past and Poland's Postponed Victory / The Case of the House of Terror and the Warsaw Rising Museum
Abstract
More than thirty years after the fall of communism, both Hungary and Poland are still trying to reinvent their national identity by understanding their pasts. As flag-ship museums of Viktor Orbán's Hungary Civic Alliance (Fidesz) in Hungary and Jarosław Kaczyński's Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland, the House of Terror in Budapest and the Warsaw Rising Museum have been used as epistemological tools in advancing the governing party's respective memory politics.
Within their portrayal of the nation's contemporary past, these museums also endorse a particular national identity that serves the political desires of both Fidesz and PiS. This article traces how the museums present and signif y the nation and how they artic-ulate the national identity espoused by the museum.
The author borrows method-ological approaches from museum studies and formulates her own research proto-col, which identifies three layers of national identity articulation: the presentation of the nation, the representation of the nation, and the political production of national identity. (C) 2022, Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.